Jad Chambers Blog Archive

An Imminent Attack

by Jad Chambers,posted Nov 4 2011 7:44AM

I’m the resident “tech correspondent” for KNSS and Steve and Ted in the Morning (in a very unofficial capacity anyway.) So I’ve been following the antics of the hacker group calling themselves “Anonymous” for some time now. A couple of hacker groups like “Anonymous” and “LulzSec” have gone on kind of a tear over the last year, hacking business and government websites. The hacking goes something like this. The hacker group communicates a “threat” warning the company (or whatever) about the impending hack attack and giving the reason for the attack. Then on the day of the attack the victim’s website will go down, and that will be followed by a “victory” message released by the hacker group, usually on social media like facebook or twitter.

The latest threat Anonymous has made is against Fox News. A few weeks ago they called out Fox, stating that they believe Fox slants their coverage to promote a conservative viewpoint. A little political aside here, I think Anonymous is totally right about Fox and their very slanted coverage. Where they are wrong is their assumption that anything is wrong with that. Fox’s conservative slant isn’t exactly subtle or any kind of secret. And there are plenty of other news sources a person can turn to if they don’t like Fox. My opinion is that “media bias” (whether it’s Fox and its conservative bias or MSNBC and their liberal bias) is a labor saving device mandated because an increasing number of people want to be told what to think. I prefer to be told what happened (i.e. real journalism) and make my own decisions about what to think. But if money can be made spoonfeeding people biased commentary, I don’t have a problem with it (as if that wasn’t obvious.)

But Anonymous does, and they are attacking Fox News’ website tomorrow, Saturday Nov 5th. Get it?

Sorry, I don’t think that is as an obscure a reference as Anonymous does. But anyway, Fox fans don’t need to panic. I’m predicting that all that will happen is an hour or 2 (if that) of interrupted service at Fox News’ website. A power outage at the wrong place can be more destructive than that. Now if they go off the air and are interrupted on the web for days… well I will be forced to admit I was wrong about the seriousness of the attack. But if it is like most of the recent hacks it won’t affect most people at all. Least of all me, I don’t watch news over the weekend unless it is a BIIIIGGGG news story. I get enough of that at work.